Last week Temasek, one of Singapore's two sovereign wealth funds, made a $1.3 billion investment in a liquified natural gas block in Tanzania. The deal illustrates a number of trends about the way that investments, particularly by state entities, are going to look in years ahead.

Temasek bought the 20% stake in three East African LNG blocks from the UK's Ophir Energy. There are two angles to the deal that are striking: one, where it is, and two, the type of energy it is pursuing.

First, the Africa angle. In its formative years, Temasek's investments were mainly in Singapore itself. Temasek started out largely as a vehicle for the state stakes in big entities like DBS bank, Singapore Telecommunications and once those companies were listed on the local stock exchange. Then, it steadily became more international, including stakes in a number of western businesses. But in the mid-2000s, it made a directional shift to focus on what it knew best: companies in emerging markets, with growth drivers that they, as Singaporeans at the hub of southeast Asian trade, understood and could quantify. The importance of this change of direction was underpinned by Singapore's disastrous investments in western banks during the global financial crisis - buying on the way down, selling at the bottom - and now Temasek operates under a target global allocation of 40:30:20:10. The 40 is emerging Asia ex-Singapore; the 30 is Singapore itself; 20 is OECD countries; and 10% is called "other".

The only 20% allocation to the developed world is the lowest of any publicly disclosed figure by a major sovereign wealth fund, but perhaps the more interesting point has been to look at this "other" bit. In theory, this could be Latin America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe or Africa. For many years, in practice it has chiefly meant Latin America: Temasek has built offices in Mexico and Brazil, and staffed them with some long-standing and respected executives. This investment in the Tanzania LNG blocks is interesting because it shows a considerable commitment to Africa, something that we have seen much more of from China than Singapore in the last 10 years.

The deal also illustrates the much-talked about idea of South-South trade, or investment patterns in between emerging markets around the world. HSBC describes south-south trading corridors as the engines of global growth, and says that linkages with the most striking growth today are pairs that once would have seemed very unlikely: Poland-Bangladesh, for example, or India-Mexico, or Malaysia-Brazil. Asia-Africa trade is going to be absolutely central to this growth.

Then there's the LNG side. Temasek made its investment through Pavilion Energy, which was set up in April as a wholly owned subsidiary of Temasek specifically to invest in the LNG supply chain worldwide. Its stated mandate is partly Singapore's energy security, and partly good investment. It will start out by acquiring strategic LNG assets, from gas supplies to liquefaction plants, shipping and regas facilities; then it will build its operational strength as a business in its own right, including LNG trading, sales and marketing; and thirdly, it will integrate it all.

To understand this, one has to appreciate how Singapore has made such a remarkable success of itself since the Second World War: a country with no significant natural resources, too small for many crops, with nothing of use to dig up and sell. It is a remarkable story that has been underpinned by the skill of putting itself at the centre of things. To capture trade, it made itself the region's best port. To capture investment flows, it made itself an accommodating financial centre, and is now the regional leader for areas such as foreign exchange and private banking. LNG is another area where Singapore sees an opportunity: it doesn't have any gas fields of its own, but it wants to be a centre for storage and shipment of the fuel. It also wants to make sure it is well established by the time Australia's LNG projects start to come onstream in 2015. So Singapore will build the infrastructure, combine it with good business practice, and so will become a hub for something of which it has nothing itself. The Tanzania acquisition is the first of what should be many across the LNG supply chain. The gas it produces will one day be traded through Singapore.

A great many investors, many of them sovereign, can see the opportunity in LNG. In the case of the Qatar Investment Authority, LNG is the source of the money in the first place; for others, it's something to be bought, the sooner the better, such as India's state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation buying a 10% stake in an Anadarko gas field off Mozambique for $2.64 billion in August. When an investment theme combines emerging Africa with LNG, you can assume it is going to be active.